John Hay’s Diplomacy: Some New Perspectives and An Old Classic

TheCanadian Review of American Studies, Volume 10,Number 2, Fall, 1979 JohnHay's Diplomacy: Some New Perspectivesand An Old Classic R. D. Accinelli i.entonJ. Clymer. John Hay, The Gentleman as Diplomat. Ann Arbor: TheUnnersity of Michigan Press, 1975. 314 + ix pp. Howard I. Kushner and Anne Hummel Sherrill. John Milton Hay, The[111011ci Poet,:1· and Politics. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977. 217 pp. John Hay was, until his death in 1905, one of the most notable figures in .\merican national life. His circle of friends and acquaintances was as noteworthyas it was varied and extensive. His dazzling record of achievement in a remarkable assortment of roles-journalist, poet, novelist, historian and diplomat- was unmatched among his contemporaries. As versatile as he was talented,he was a man of many interests, opportunities and accomplishments. Raised in a family of modest means in an Illinois frontier village, Hay was oneof those singular individuals whose lives conformed to the American dreamof success. His appointment in 1861 at the age of only twenty-two as AbrahamLincoln's assistant private secretary placed him in a unique vantage pomtduring the Civil War; his intimate association with the president would, mlater years, also serve as an invaluable political asset. By 1871 Hay had becomean editor of the prestigious New York Tribune and an extraordinarily popularpoet and author. His marriage three years later to the daughter of a wealthyCleveland industrialist enabled him to fashion a life of cultured leisurewhile continuing to pursue his interests in politics and writing. In 1883-84 his anonymously published novel, The Bread-winners, was the sensationof the literary season. At the end of the decade he and John Nicolay completedtheir monumental and widely acclaimed collaborative biography ofLincoln. So highly regarded were Hay's literary achievements in his own daythat in 1904 he was chosen over such eminent authors as Henry Adams and Henry James as one of the seven charter members of the American 196 R. D. Accinel/i Academy of Arts and Letters. But it was as a diplomat, serving first as Ambassador to England (1897-98) and then as Secretary ofState(l898-1905), that Hay attained his most enduring renown. As his closest friend, Henn Adams, later wrote, Hay died "as we would all die if we could, in full fame,;t home and abroad, universally regretted, and wielding his power to the Iast."1 For well over forty years, scholars wanting an authoritative full-length study of Hay have turned to Tyler Dennett's John Hay: From Poetrvto Politics. 2 This biography, a work of uncommon sensitivity and literary g.race for which Dennett received a Pulitizer Prize in 1933,was the last major publication of a distinguished pioneer in the field of American diplomatic historv and the foremost student of United States-East Asian relations during his lifetime. It is fitting testimony to the excellence of Dennett's biography that neither of the books reviewed here supplant it, or even attempt to do so. The first of these, Kenton J. Clymer's John Hay, The Gentleman as Diplomat, has as its principal aim a re-examination in light of his political and social philosophy of Hay's performance as Ambassador and Secretary of State. Clymer combines diplomatic with intellectual history: he asserts aclose relationship between Hay's behavior as a diplomat and convictions whichhe had evolved primarily in the context of his domestic experiences. Thus, in addition to five chapters on Hay's conduct of foreign affairs, Clymer devotes a chapter to his circle of friends and a chapter each to his views on domestic developments, on race and ethnicity, and on international issues from 1865 to 1897. The second and most recent addition to Hay scholarship is Howard I. Kushner and Anne Hummel Sherrill's John Milton Hay, The Union of Poetry and Politics, a volume in the Twayne World Leaders Series. The authors describe their book as "less a biography of John Hay than an essayon his life" (n.p.). While acknowledging the lasting value of Dennett and the important contributions of later scholars, including Clymer, they contend that there are questions about their subject's historical significance and his riseto power as a statesman which...